. >> these students are part of an educational program run by the library. >> get close enough that you can see the handwritten text, and that you can see the hand-painted paintings that we were talking about. >> to illuminate manuscripts, the monks used many colors. but the most prized was gold. real gold. called gold leaf, it's even thinner than a leaf from a tree. >> you would have enough gold from that plum-sized nugget of gold to cover the floor of an entire tennis court. cool, right? that's how thin that gold is. >> while these students are getting their first look at illuminated manuscripts, these students are learning how they were made. >> basically, it's my first initial, and we got to design around our first initial. >> what you do is you blow your hot air onto the glue dots, and then you take the gold and you press it on. >> and then you get to use real gold and stick it on, and then you just have gold on your paper. it's really cool. >> what else is cool is the glue the monks used in the old days. it was made from fish guts. >> and everyone's gonna get an opportunity to do